Dynamic Capability Deployment among U.S. Defense Systems Integrators as a Response to Environmental Change

We conduct a longitudinal case study of the top five U.S. defense systems integrators between 1998 and 2007 to examine their response to the massive environmental change triggered by the 9/11 attacks. We collected and organized data around a set of fine-grained measures to analyze, over time and across firms, top management attention to change in the environment, discourse about firm-level change as well as how firms actually renew their assets at multiple levels. We find that the process of dynamic capability (DC) deployment unfolds in three steps, from the recognition that the environment has changed (monitoring and sensing), to the decision to deploy DC (analyzing and deciding) and to the implementation of asset re-orchestration (implementing). Methodological, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.